We were relieved when the skies had cleared a
little in the morning and we achieved the first 10 minutes without rain for
what already seemed like a long time. We stretched our legs and had a nice chat
to some American girls who had been working and travelling and had been invited
to stay under sponsorship.
I found myself kicking myself again. I always
intended to work and travel in Australia and New Zealand and would sometimes
love to turn the clock back 14 years and have a word or two with myself. Hindsight
doesn’t reflect an alternate reality though and I have to try to learn from it
instead of torturing myself. Matt feels similar in many ways. There’s so much
we both want to do yet before we have to grow up and I spend a lot of time
thinking to try and reconcile what we’d like to do with what we may have to do.
I have a constantly expanding list of skills I want to develop, and hobbies I
want to take up, and things that I’d like to do, and things that I want to
learn, and stuff I want to do better, and it just goes on and on and on. I want
more people, more places, more knowledge, more life. Sometimes I can’t wait to
come home to get started and sometimes I’m too scared to come home because I
cannot see how reality can possibly work like that. Surely I couldn’t have been
doing all of these things all along? Maybe the magic only works while we’re
away? It’s hard to not spend too much time scrabbling away in my mind for a way
to somehow make it all work.
But in the end I don’t like to talk about it
because it all sounds too corny. I just know that I have never been so relaxed
and happy but how could I not be? I don’t have to do any of the things that
used to fill me with anxiety and self-doubt. I don’t have to teach or drive or
please anyone other than Matt and myself. I don’t even have to pay bills or clean
the house or do the boring stuff in the same way. I’d be stupid to still be
such a wreck all of the time.
Back in the not-so-real real world, we tried to
start Garry and found he had a totally flat battery and could barely muster a
splutter. Almost everyone else had already left the camp site other than a
large hired campervan and a man with a caravan who was searching under the
trees using a metal detector.
Not wanting to disturb the sacred haven of a
person’s posh camper we opted to ask the treasure-seeker if he had any jump
leads instead. He was friendly enough but Matt and I soon found ourselves
somehow dismissed until he was ready to stop searching for whatever he was
searching for and check to see if he could help us out.
When we got back to Garry however, he seemed to
have mustered some life from somewhere and started straight away. Magic.
Glad to be on the move and reasonably dry, we headed
to pancake rocks where, due to a geological process that isn't completely
understood, the rocks form in layers like pancakes. The sea has worn away at
the rocks and made chasms, blowholes and other interesting features that can be
seen from specially constructed viewing areas. They’re best viewed in stormy
weather (yesterday would have been perfect) or at high tide for their full
effect but we still saw the sea having a good slosh and a few blowholes
blowing.
Keen to be outside as long as possible, we
followed a walking track along the banks of the Ponorari and Punakaiki river
for a few hours. The vegetation was totally different from our last few walks
and we wandered from temperate rain forest to grassy meadows. It seemed a long
time since we’d just walked through plain old fields.
We went over the swingbridge and past some pretty
ponies and back to the rocks to take some pictures before setting off to cover
a bit more ground.
We drove along the dramatic coastal road for a
while but Matt got sleepy so we pulled over in a DOC site for him to have a
rest. Matt had a little sleep and I met Phil Solid. I introduced the pair of
them when Matt woke up but Matt found him a dirty disgrace so we left him there
and moved on back into the rain. I’d explain more about Phil but he was
spectacle probably best recalled verbally.
We spent the night at Kawatiri , a camp by the
main road. It was a bit noisy and full of bitey critters but it was free so
we’re not complaining.
No comments:
Post a Comment